BERNARDINO DA LAREDO. — Franciscan mystic, born in Seville in 1482, died after September 1540. After studying medicine, he entered the Order of the Observant Friars Minor as a lay brother; in the custody of the Holy Angels at Sierra Morena (Seville), he served as an infirmarian. A man of very austere life, pious and meditative, he wrote, in addition to two works on medicine (Metaphora medicinae, Seville 1522, and Modus faciendi cum ordine medicandi, ibid. 1527), the famous Subida del Monte Sion (ibid. 1535), which was reprinted several times. Renowned for miracles, he died in the reputation of sanctity in the convent of St. Francis of the Mount, at Valverde, in the diocese of Seville; the Franciscan Martyrology commemorates him on 16 April.
The Subida del Monte Sion, which recalls the «Subida del Monte Carmelo» of St. John of the Cross, is divided into three books: knowledge of one’s own nothingness, meditation on the mysteries of the holy Humanity of Christ, and contemplation of the Divinity. For purposes of study, the second edition, revised especially in the third part, from 1538 must be kept in mind. In style and throughout its presentation, the work reflects more the northern mysticism of the Netherlands, from which it properly receives its distinctive tone and character, than Spanish mysticism. B. in fact, generally very sparing in citing his sources, owed much to the Carthusian Enrico di Baume (Ugo de Balma), and above all to the Directorio aureo of his confrere Enrico Herp (Harphius, d. in 1477); but B.’s influence on the great Spanish mystics was considerable. In short, repeating with some reservations the judgment of a seventeenth-century apologist for St. John of the Cross (Fray Basilio Ponce de León), one may say that the whole, or almost the whole, doctrine of the Noche oscura is found in B., while it is also well known that St. Teresa of Ávila (Vida, c. 23) read him preferentially and took him as her guide in unitive prayer.